


goodbye for now (so long)

by seekrest



Series: Whumptober 2020 [5]
Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Insomnia, Johnny is having a rough time, Ned too, References to Depression, Roommates, bonding through terrible television and bad memories, its just me and my whims now, sometimes all you need is a quiet moment with a friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27168691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest/pseuds/seekrest
Summary: Johnny winced as he slid the window open, the creaky whine that he heard being almost unbearably loud as he stepped inside the quiet apartment.Any hope that he had that he could come in unannounced was gone when he glanced to the living room and saw none other than Ned Leeds - staring back at him with the kind of amused smile that he only ever used to reserve for Peter.
Relationships: Ned Leeds & Johnny Storm, Peter Parker & Johnny Storm
Series: Whumptober 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1954963
Comments: 18
Kudos: 47
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	goodbye for now (so long)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [if you leave (the light on), then i’ll leave (the light on)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26961319) by [seekrest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekrest/pseuds/seekrest). 



> This is a sequel to my prior Peter & Johnny fic from this series. 
> 
> Once again, from the bottom of my heart... my bad. 
> 
> Prompt: Exhaustion

Johnny winced as he slid the window open, the creaky whine that he heard being almost unbearably loud as he stepped inside the quiet apartment.

Any hope that he had that he could come in unannounced was gone when he glanced to the living room and saw none other than Ned Leeds - staring back at him with the kind of amused smile that he only ever used to reserve for Peter.

It hits him straight in his chest, the depth and ache of his loss - dizzying in how all consuming it was almost a year later.

Johnny had lived a literal nightmare in the Negative Zone for three years, yet the past year hurt in a way that was so much worse. 

Johnny swallows down the lump in his throat, recognizing Ned is still staring at him as he coughs a few times and says, “Hey.”

“Hey man,” Ned says carefully, eyeing him up and down before nodding once, “You okay?”

“Yeah of course,” Johnny says a little too quickly, just enough for Ned to raise an eyebrow as Johnny fully steps into the apartment and lowers the creaky window down.

“Gotta fix that,” he mutters, half to himself and half to Ned, the latter of whom still staring at him with a look that Johnny can’t quite decipher. 

He’d known Ned for years by now, yet they’d always been on the peripheral - friends by proxy, brought together because of someone who was no longer there.

Johnny hadn’t ever shared his aversion to living alone with anyone other than Peter yet it was Ned who brought up the topic of living together - casually mentioning that his lease was almost up a month after Peter’s funeral and the fact that he was interested in finding another roommate since his other one was moving to San Francisco.

Johnny had taken the offer like the life raft it was, signing leases and moving boxes on autopilot, deflecting to Ned to decide where they were living and what furniture they used.

Half the things in he and Peter’s old apartment had been junk anyway and while Johnny couldn’t bear the thought of throwing any of it out, he also wasn’t totally aware of what happened to it.

“J?”

“Huh?” Johnny asks, Ned looking at him expectantly before nodding towards the window.

Johnny realizes then that he’s done it again, getting lost in memories and his own thoughts - a by-product of running on fumes for the better part of a year. 

He shakes himself, partly to wake himself up but mostly just to get his body moving - forcing a smile as he says, “Hot water still out?”

Ned shakes his head before saying, “Nah, it was fine when I tried it. You should be good.”

“Thanks,” Johnny says with smile that’s a bit more genuine, waving to him before walking to their shared bathroom and saying, “See you man.”

“See you,” Ned says quietly, Johnny’s brain still feeling a little foggy to make sense of anything.

It’s not till Johnny’s in the shower, hot water steaming up the bathroom that it hits him just how late it is - the scalding hot water barely making a dent to his skin but the water pressure alone reminding him that he’s awake.

Sleep had been an ephemeral concept for Johnny ever since he came back from the Negative Zone but it was even worse now - any chance he had of sleeping now throwing him into nightmares that was only made worse when he woke up and found that they were all real.

It ran in a loop in his mind - awake or dreaming - of him, MJ and Peter laughing in their old kitchen. Of Peter getting an alert on his phone, leaving through that stupid tiny window as Johnny called out banter that was so banal and now held so much significance. Of the terror that gripped him when his phone buzzed so hard that it almost fell off the counter, a fail safe that Ned had rigged into Peter’s suit to alert Johnny if Peter was ever in mortal danger.

Johnny gasps as the water streams over his back, pressing a hand to the cool tile as his vision swarms - from the water crashing over his hair and from the tears streaming down his face, the fear and panic of flying off into the sky to reach Peter, begging himself to go faster, only to arrive and see him—

Johnny closes his eyes, willing the nightmarish images of what Peter had looked like when found him away and begging his mind to supply literally anything else - of Peter’s smile or his laugh or the stupid way he used to sing to himself when he did the dishes.

It’s an ache that sits in his chest, so heavy that Johnny feels like he can’t breathe - blinding in how painful it is as he tries and fails to take a deep, gulping breath - the memories of Peter alive and Peter dead flipping through his brain like a camera.

The memory that sticks with him is the night he and Ned played a video game championship, Peter stumbling in during the middle of the night not unlike tonight - Johnny snapping his eyes open when he realizes why.

Johnny had been so wrapped up in his grief, in his exhaustion and his thin semblance of control on his life of stumbling into their apartment at 3am that it hadn’t even occurred to him to wonder what Ned was still doing up.

He rubs a hand over his face, leaning up from the wall of the shower as a deep and heavy shame washes over him.

Johnny quickly turns the water off, grabs a towel and changes as quickly as he can - the lump in his throat and in his chest growing heavier and heavier as he does so. 

He may have failed Peter, but he wouldn’t fail Ned.

Johnny was going to be sure of that.

* * *

It doesn’t surprise Johnny to find Ned still in the living room, noticing now that the television was playing some terrible Netflix show that Johnny knew for a fact that Ned didn’t like.

The pain in his chest grows when he recognizes that while Ned didn’t like it, Peter had - swallowing that feeling down as he says, “Hey.”

Ned looks to him, Johnny seeing for the briefest flash of a second a grief that’s so devastating that it threatens to billow him over - only for Ned to seemingly shuffle it away in real time as he offers Johnny a half-smile.

“Hey. Feeling better?”

Johnny shrugs, walking over to where Ned was sitting on the couch and sitting on the opposite side - the empty space between them feeling literal and metaphorical considering where Peter always used to be. 

They sit in a comfortable but heavy silence, the sounds of the terrible television show being enough to send Johnny back to his memories - thinking that if he closed his eyes he could still hear Peter laugh at the terribly corny jokes, could even hear MJ snickering at how loudly Peter laughed. 

Johnny sniffs, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand as he thinks of her - wondering if she too was staring up at the ceiling, missing the empty space in her bed, another pang running through him at the memory of what she had looked like when she’d been rushed to the medbay, completely unaware that Johnny had been too late.

He blinks away the tears before sneaking a glance towards Ned who looked as if he was lost in some memory too - the guilt he feels in making Peter’s loss all about him bubbling up to the surface.

Johnny may have lived with Peter for the last year of his life but Ned had been Peter’s best friend for a decade. If Johnny felt like he was missing a limb, he could barely fathom what it felt like for Ned.

“Hey,” Johnny says, his voice cracking more than he intended before clearing his throat. Ned turns to him, looking just as spent and as worn as Johnny feels. 

He realizes then that he’s not sure of what to say. They’d talked about Peter an endless amount of times since he’d died, but there was something about the air in the room - thick and filled with so much grief - that it overwhelmed Johnny to even think of how to bring him up now without sobbing.

Ned, in the intuitive way he always was, beats him to it as he says, “He hated this episode.”

Johnny laughs, the sound choked and raspy from how hard he’s trying not to cry, rubbing the tears from his eyes with the palm of his hand as he says, “Yeah. I don’t get it. It’s all terrible.”

Ned laughs in return, the sound lifting the pressure in the room slightly as Johnny smiles - bringing his hand down as Ned looks from him back to the television screen. 

It’s quiet for a few moments before Ned quietly says, “It helps, you know?”

Johnny waits, Ned turning back to him as he says, “Playing it at night. I can’t sleep with the stupid laugh track. Never could,” Ned smirks, eyes lost in some kind of memory as Johnny listens intently.

“He used to— in college, he hated coming home to silence cause he said it was too much of a shock. Something about the noise and his senses I don’t,” Ned shakes his head. “I’d play this for him in the living room if I was still up, rigged it so it didn’t ask if he was still watching you know?”

Johnny stays quiet, Ned laughing to himself as he said, “I couldn’t sleep. The laugh track was always so _loud_ , till he got my ear plugs. Cheap things from a bodega,” Ned says with a smile - Johnny’s heart breaking when he realizes now what he hadn’t until just then, Ned holding on to what he can only assume is the ear plugs. 

“When you’re out on patrol, sometimes I just…” Ned begins before trailing off - Johnny immediately understanding as he nods. 

“I get it.”

Ned looks at him with a mix of regret and shame, something that Johnny thinks is completely misplaced considering how much he relied on Ned the past few months - how much they _all_ did. 

The image of Peter that day, bloodied and long gone haunted Johnny - but there was a secret part of him that knew he would’ve hated himself more had he not been there. If he would’ve heard the news later alone, in the quiet of their apartment, knowing that for as much as he never slept now, Johnny wouldn’t have ever been able to rest if he lived through that. 

It was Ned who hacked the suit for him and Ned who was the one that he was still with - holding Ned’s gaze as he tries to smile.

Ned stares for a few seconds before accepting it, nodding once as he fiddles with the ear plugs in his hand - the two of them turning back to the terrible show playing in the background. 

Peter had brought them together and now, Peter was gone.

They still had each other.

Johnny could at least be thankful for that. 


End file.
